James Shaeffer at Reference Art from Richmond, Virginia.  All photos on site for Art Observed by Elene Damenia.

The second iteration of the Dependent Art Fair took place on the Saturday afternoon of Armory week, alongside several satellite fairs—including the Independent Art Fair. Dependent organizer Rose Marcus gathered 20 galleries in the Lower East Side Comfort Inn hotel, offering the two night stay for a fair fee of $400. The DIY, tongue-in-cheek fair is geared toward community and dialogue amongst its participating galleries and artists, seeking a sort of humorous—yet rigorous—elegance, leaving the intense marketing focus of other fairs to the back seat. Up and down the six occupied floors (floors 3–8, with a smoking deck on 6), visitors squeezed through the hallways and into the individual hotel rooms to see a variety of contemporary painting, sculpture, video, and installations, including a bed-ridden mini Kawasaki motorcycle at Reference Art, or made-to-order rum-fruit smoothies at Roberto Paradise.

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